UPDATE 10/26 noon PDT: See my latest diary on this topic here.
This is Greg ("Danby"), on the campaign account. I'm really posting this diary for one reason: lots of people have been asking if Ron, as a Silverado Canyon resident, is all right. Until this afternoon, I hadn't know, but now I do. He is OK, though his house is without power and other services, and he is evidently involved in the community efforts to secure the canyon from fire. I give some background in this diary on my own account. I'm posting a diary from this account as well because I assume that people who want to know what's going on will check either this account or mine, and I want the story to be at the top of whichever account they check; I apologize for pushing down the rec list.
To make this a substantive (and long enough) diary, I want to acknowledge not only the amazing work done in the multiday live-blog, but from some other sources with which you may not be as familiar. If you want decent information on the Santiago Fire in Orange County specifically, I urge you to check out the following:
(1) The coverage at Calitics has been as incisive and excellent as usual.
(2) The Liberal OC has been offering a clear and well-referenced set of stories as they develop.
As usual, we extend our appreciation to our friends on both sites.
Because I have not been able to consult with Ron since Monday morning, I am not going to say anything political here, with one exception of which I'm confident he'd approve.
When people go into the National Guard, being mobilized for emergencies such as this is the sort of thing that they expect. They don't expect to be sent to Iraq for extended tours of duty refereeing a civil war, they don't expect to be drafted for the President's use in what may be martial law, and they don't expect to lack the equipment they need because it's being squandered elsewhere. For the Administration to say that National Guard troops knew what they were getting into when they signed up for service is macabre. They expected a President who would treat them and their mission with respect, and they didn't get one.
Barbara Boxer is evidently getting slammed on right wing sites because of a colloquy she had with GOP Senator Kit Bond, who to his credit is on the correct side of the National Guard issue, which you can read on the link, about how deploying the California National Guard (and that of other states) has harmed our efforts to protect against this disaster. Well, we have her back on this issue. There are trade-offs, as Republicans like to say, and this week the trade-off was between using Guardsmen to cover Bush's policy and using them to do the job they thought they signed up to do.